patterico’s pontifications (who graciously links to us, as we are tangentially involved in this brewing journamalistic scandal) points out that joel stein, big-time latimes op-ed writer, was a little bit sticky-fingered when it came to premises for his column this last week:
here’s joel stein, november 2:
just how easy is it for coulter to offend someone? would any words from her mouth do the trick? to test this theory, i developed the ann coulter mad libs.<sup>TM</sup>
it’s a good thing he used that <sup>TM</sup> mark. he wouldn’t want anyone to steal his concept.
patterico goes on:
oh, look! here’s media bloodhound, october 18 (two weeks earlier):
in honor of ann coulter’s influence on american media and politics, the penguin group (usa), in a joint venture with ms. coulter’s random house publisher, the crown publishing group, is releasing a special edition of mad libs titled ann libs.
readers of skippy will remember our linkage to mediabloodhound’s original piece in mid-october, which we thought was pretty amusing (the piece, not the middle of october).
and apparently joel stein found it amusing, too. amusing enough to appropriate, and take complete credit for, as his own.
we suppose that this, in and of itself, is not enough to topple stein from his job, a la dommie darko at the washpost. but we would hope that it does at least give stein a black enough of an eye to have to apologize and admit in print that mediabloodhound was the one who “developed” ann coulter mad libs.
why not help out by emailing the latimes editors, their readers’ representative, and/or joel stein, and pointing out this obvious bit of literary thievery?
